I've been working on getting away from a straight E major pentatonic scale on this. I kinda always had little hints of the A and B changes but I've tried to incorporate more of that into this one - hopefully w/o overdoing it. The trick is to have it not sound so obvious and for it to flow smoothly.

Billbbill wrote:I've been working on getting away from a straight E major pentatonic scale on this. I kinda always had little hints of the A and B changes but I've tried to incorporate more of that into this one - hopefully w/o overdoing it. The trick is to have it not sound so obvious and for it to flow smoothly.

Bravo, another great vid.

I find myself in the same situation a lot too. Wanting to stray more from the straight pentatonic melody but having a hard time making it work. You can tell Jerry obviously uses more than 5 notes. Situation is pretty common, definitely not just w/ BEW. A couple others from the top of my head are TLEO and Second that Emotion

The "missing" two major scale notes are the 4 and 7 (A and D#), and it seems logical to me to use the 4 over the IV chord (A) and 7 over the V (B), and of course passing tones too. Unfortunately, I have a hard time translating these ideas into practice without losing the feel of the great melody.

You got any suggestions? I know its a vague question but any help would be great. I feel like this is my main roadblock in lead playing right now.

Thanks st.s - I looked you up at your yt page and saw a young buck from germany. I didn't make the connection to you. I did do some cornyish reminiscing - to be your age again and know what I know now.

Rev_Roach wrote:I find myself in the same situation a lot too. Wanting to stray more from the straight pentatonic melody but having a hard time making it work. You can tell Jerry obviously uses more than 5 notes. Situation is pretty common, definitely not just w/ BEW. A couple others from the top of my head are TLEO and Second that Emotion

The "missing" two major scale notes are the 4 and 7 (A and D#), and it seems logical to me to use the 4 over the IV chord (A) and 7 over the V (B), and of course passing tones too. Unfortunately, I have a hard time translating these ideas into practice without losing the feel of the great melody.

You got any suggestions? I know its a vague question but any help would be great. I feel like this is my main roadblock in lead playing right now.

I suppose that's the 64k question.

I'd say (if you don't already) try and lean on the notes of the chord triad you're playing over to begin and end phrases. I know I'm like a broken record with this, but to me it's a good way to give lead lines a chordal feel, thus, I don't want to say a more melodic feeling/flow, but at least one that more intimately relates to the chord progression.

So over C#m - C#, E, Ab
E - E, B, Ab
B - B, Eb, F#
A - A, C#, E

So we have E-F#-Ab-A-B-C#-Eb

This is exactly as you stated - E maj pentatonic with the 4 (A) and the 7 (D# or Eb) or E Ionian.

Note: slight miscue below- edit - added the 2nd E on the ionian line - I extended the scale and forgot the 2nd E

Sometimes laying it out like this helps me think.
Sometimes I'll play straight pentatonic licks over the respective chords - E over E & C#m, A over A, and B over B.

I'll add some chromatic runs, usually only short three note runs.

Additions to E maj Pent:

A, G (flat 3rd), D (flat 7th)

chromo runs:

B->C#, C#->B
F#->Ab, Ab->F#

often you can do some 3 note runs up to and down to a note in the chord triad as you change from one chord to the next, for instance;

E-F-F# when going from E to B etc.

Another edit below: forgot the E as an added note to the B pent scale.Additions to B maj Pent:

E (4th of B maj), D (flat 3rd), A (flat 7th)

same relative chromo runs

Additions to A maj Pent:

Ab, C (flat 3rd), G (flat 7th)

Same relative chomo runs

You can also do some 4 note runs between the 3rd to the 5th though I don't really do them for this song.

So I hope this helps some.

Honestly, for me the another big thing is getting a feeling for complementary phrasing. That is having a following phrase say something that fits in relation to the previous phrase - a resolving that encompasses more than one phrase.

I think this goes a long way to creating a good flow. Getting a feel for intervals and practice is the only way to get this going in a meaningful way, to me anyway.

Last edited by Billbbill on Mon Dec 03, 2007 4:47 am, edited 1 time in total.